


Healing

by saltylikecrait



Series: Brightest Stars Quartet [5]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Anxiety Disorder, Domestic, F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fluff, Force-Sensitive Finn, Jedi Training (Star Wars), References to Depression, Rey Skywalker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2019-11-29 03:37:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18217676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltylikecrait/pseuds/saltylikecrait
Summary: Extra fic for the Brightest Stars AU. After being sent away by Leia, Finn and Rey adapt to domestic life with Luke while coping with being in the middle of an intergalactic war.





	Healing

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Finnrey Friday. I wanted to put this out before the IX trailer drops today. Whatever happens today, I hope everyone can find something to enjoy. 
> 
> This is a side-fic that bridges the gap between stories in this AU. The final installment will be posted next month.

“So this is it?” Finn glanced around the barren, frozen landscape. After years serving on Starkiller Base, he was used to the cold and snow, but Starkiller had facilities and this place looked like no one had stepped foot in the area in years.

Luke stared at the bare tan cliff to their right, crossing his arms. “Yep, this is the place.”

Rey huffed. “Cold,” she complained, trying to bury her nose deeper into her scarf and coat. “Why couldn’t Aunt Leia send us somewhere more… I don’t know… _tropical?”_

Her father chucked. “Because that would be too easy. Besides, I need you both to focus your attention on getting up to par as Jedi-" he glanced quickly at Rey, _“-Force-users.”_

“Nice save,” Rey commented.

“Finn, here, let’s have a lesson. See what you can do.” Luke gestured for Finn to approach him and stand next to him. “We’re looking for a way in,” he explained. “Tell me what you can sense. Where should we go?”

Rey nodded, understanding what the lesson was about and remained quiet.

Approaching the cliff, Finn looked around a little confused before he reached out to touch the cold stone. Earlier, he told Rey that he wasn’t use to taking time to focus on something that might not be there and was worried that his conditioning and training might make it difficult for him to learn with Luke. In the First Order, all he had to do was follow orders and figure out the best and most efficient way to complete them.

Closing his eyes in an attempt to concentrate, Finn spoke through what he sensed. “I think there’s something beyond this cliff. It’s like a wall.”

Nodding, Luke encouraged him, “Go on.”

“I don’t sense anything alive or moving. No droids.”

“Artoo will be so disappointed,” Rey joked.

“It’s like there’s a space inside the cliff. Our safe house,” he concluded.

“Good.” Luke flashed him a smile. “And can you tell me how to get inside?”

Finn felt around the cliff, searching for something. “I can’t see it, but I know it’s there,” he concluded. “There’s a switch of some kind that will open something.”

They let him search for a couple of minutes though Rey was obviously inpatient from the cold. Then, as Luke was about to offer some help, Finn’s hand hit against a rock, which flipped to the side, revealing a keypad under it.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to use the Force to hack the system,” Luke laughed as he went over to enter the code.

With a slight, low rumble, the door became visible by pressing forward from the cliff, then moving upward like the doors of an old private hangar. 

“Let’s check out our new home,” Luke suggested.

* * *

It didn’t take long for them to settle down. The safe house was spacious, but bare regarding furnishings and décor. They had what they needed, and the Resistance sent them rations every other standard week though they were free to take the snow speeder to venture into town a couple of miles away if they promised to keep a low profile. Finn and Rey were specifically ordered to go visit a doctor weekly to talk to them about their problems adapting into normal society.

Well, Finn followed orders, but Rey was another story entirely.

She tried not to bother him or her father while they worked on their Jedi stuff, sometimes, to avoid becoming out of practice, she would partake in their meditation and sparring, but most days she kept to herself. Finn kept begging her to go into town with him while he went to his appointments, hoping that she would take the plunge and go into one herself, but she either drove him there and wandered around the town to get anything they needed or sat quietly and unnoticed in a corner at the only place that sold a decent cup of caf.

It wasn’t unusual for Finn to chat up the locals and be greeted on the streets already, but for Rey, making friends just wasn’t something she was good at anymore. Part of her wished she was more like him, but she also couldn’t bring herself to trust anyone. 

But she couldn’t keep herself away from her hobbies and that seemed to bring attention to herself. One day, she was working outside on the cold streets, replacing a part of the speeder she traded some spare metal parts for and caught the eyes of passerbys. Most were impressed that someone so young could jump in and fix a speeder the way she did, but there were a few that shook their heads and approached her to give her advice for beginners, not expecting Rey to know far more than they did and be salty about it to boot. Those were the people that walked away grumbling and with a bruised ego.

This time, Rey spent her time looking for what she needed to make sure she had a private way to transmit messages and have them encrypted, everything she could do to make sure she wasn’t being traced and that she would be the only one to read them. There was a lot she needed to do if she still wanted to be useful to the Resistance.

She already planted the seeds for her plan by mentioning to her aunt before she left that she had eyes in the First Order still and swore up and down that her sources were trustworthy. No, she couldn’t say she exactly _trusted_ Armitage Hux, but no one had to know that he was her contact and she would ask Finn what he thought about what she was being fed to make sure they weren’t walking into a trap. Hux needed Kylo gone, but he wasn’t an idiot. There was no way he would give Rey anything that might tell them about the happenings in the First Order. What she was guessing was that she would receive tidbits of information: numbers of guards and stormtroopers that Kylo surrounded himself with, a location if Kylo went on-world himself. It would be vague information, but just enough that she could keep tabs on the Supreme Leader’s activities.

Hoping that she didn't appear too suspicious as she sat in the café, she tried a practice message from her datapad to the comm device. When it went through, encrypted and anonymous, she secretly celebrated her success and eyed the sweet warm mash that the locals liked to eat in here. Finn was taking a little longer than normal, so she hoped he didn’t mind that she ordered both of them something.

“Sorry it took so long,” he told her as he rushed into the shop, a little out of breath. “The appointment before me was late a few minutes.”

With a smile, she shook her head. “It’s fine, but I hope you’re hungry. I just ordered us something warm for lunch.”

The mash was perfect for the climate and sweet to the taste. Back in the First Order, she and Finn might have considered something so sugary to be a dessert for special occasions and not something that people ate every day. They grinned at each other like children as they ate.

Rey’s grin felt even sweeter knowing that this time, when she kept something a secret, she would make sure it would stay that way.

* * *

Despite the years of estrangement, Rey felt a tug at her heart when she realized that after all the longing, she finally got to spend time with her father. She knew he still hadn’t forgiven her for her stunt on the _Supremacy,_ but she came home alive and Luke didn’t seem inclined to remain angry at her forever.

“Who am I to judge?” Luke told her as he gazed down at his mechanical hand, twisting it before making it into a fist. “I disobeyed my own master’s warning when I was about the same age.”

His confession brought up a memory long lost to time and pain. When the school still stood, her father used his hand as an example, a warning to the padawans that running into danger, especially when they were not ready, had its consequences. He wanted them to know that not everyone needed to play hero, in fact, he’d rather a kid didn’t have to.

She wondered if that was why he always seemed to look at her with regret in his eyes. Her own journey started when she was far younger than he had been. At least Luke had been considered an adult by the galaxy’s standards. Rey had still been a child when she was taken.

One evening, after she made her first contact with General Hux to tell him how to reach her, she found her father alone in meditation. Finn already retired to the bedroom that he and Rey shared for the night while Rey stayed up for a bit longer, too occupied by her thoughts to sleep.

Clearing her throat, she hoped that he wouldn’t be angry if she interrupted him. 

“Do you think the light will accept me again?”

It had been on her mind for a while. The pull of the darkness was becoming something she could more readily resist, but she got nowhere closer to feeling the warmth of the Force in her meditation than she had back on Ach-To.

He opened his eyes, frowning. “Do you have doubts?”

She wasn’t sure how to respond, so she only shrugged.

With a heaving sigh, Luke unfolded his legs and gazed at her with seriousness. “Your grandfather found the light again at the end, after years of being so dedicated to the dark. So tell me: if Darth Vader could feel it again, why couldn’t you?”

 _Weakness,_ her mind answered for her, but she didn’t want to admit it. “I don’t know,” she replied. “I guess I’m just worried that I never will. That I’ll be stuck between light and darkness forever.”

“Is there something wrong with that?” Her father looked at her inquisitively. “Few people can find balance between the two. You have the unique standpoint of knowing both sides of the Force and have been able to control both.”

She never really thought about it this way and she had originally believed that standing between the two forces would give her an advantage over Snoke and Kylo. So far, that had not proven to be true, but what if she could use abilities from both sides? Briefly, she wondered if she could find anything about the Force on the HoloNet, hoping that the age of the Empire didn’t completely wipe out the knowledge of the Jedi.

“It’ll be all right, Rey,” her father promised her.

Hearing that made something in her break. She found herself with tears in her eyes, not understanding why a single sentence would cause her to cry.

“Oh, Rey.” Luke reached for her, pausing for a moment to gauge her reaction before gently pulling her into his arms.

It had been weeks since they reunited on Ach-To and that was also the last time she embraced her father like this. His grip around her was firmer than Finn’s, but it wasn’t too tight. 

For a quick moment, she saw Finn peek from behind the crack in the bedroom doorframe, the hint of a smile on his face before he closed the door.

* * *

“Well, son,” Luke greeted Finn the next morning. “How are you adjusting to all this cold?”

Finn laughed. Luke had taken to calling him “dad things” lately, but he took it as a compliment. He assumed this meant that Luke liked him and not only did he want his Jedi teacher to like him, he also wanted Rey’s father to like him. 

“Well, it’s not as tolerable without the climate-controlled suits, but I’d take being a Jedi over a Buckethead any day.”

Luke chuckled heartily. It used to make Finn nervous to mention his past in the First Order, but he quickly learned that Skywalker didn’t hold it against him, especially not after learning how he and Rey kept each other going when the worst came to pass.

There was a datapad in front of Finn, showing an application with steps to take a DNA test. General Organa told him about it, thinking he might get a match for a world where he might have been born. Maybe even an actual parental match if his family had lived on a world that was part of the New Republic. 

“Thinking of getting tested?” Luke asked. He wasn’t trying to eavesdrop and Finn didn’t mind. The print on the heading for the application was huge and hard to miss. But then, Luke frowned, matching Finn’s own expression. “We’ll have to work on your emotional projection issues, but what’s wrong?”

Finn moved his mug of caf back and forth on the table. “Well…” he hesitated.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Luke replied. “It’s not any of my business.”

“It’s not that,” Finn corrected. “It’s more that I doubt my family is even alive. I mean, the First Order isn’t exactly kind to the worlds they invade. They took me away or maybe I didn’t have a family to begin with.”

Luke placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Are you afraid of what they might think of you if they are alive?” He gazed at his student knowingly.

“I guess so. I mean, I was a stormtrooper that helped the First Order invade those worlds. Jakku…” He shuddered at the memory of the massacre at Tuanul. The screams of the villagers still rang is his ears at night; he was certain he would never forget them. “Or maybe they moved on and forgot me.”

“I don’t think anyone could forget a child they lost,” Luke spoke from experience and glanced at Finn and Rey's bedroom door sadly, “even if they were a baby.” He smiled again and shook his hand lightly against Finn’s shoulder. “It’s up to you. You’re the only one who gets to make this choice, Finn.”

Finn was left alone again at the table, staring at the datapad. It would be another hour before he expected Rey to get up – ever the one to sleep in. In the meantime, he planned to think everything through as he sipped at his caf and stared outside the viewport to watch the snow fall.

Then, after about a half-hour lost in deep thought, Finn picked up the datapad and looked at what he had to do to submit a test.


End file.
